As I said in the post on intermittent fasting, I may feel like I (sort of) achieved my weight loss goal for the year, but I certainly have not achieved my performance goals, which are roughly “to be ~60% more ‘fit’ than I am now.”
To translate this into numbers: for example, I’d like to be able to do 500 1-pump burpees in one session compared to 200-300 I can do now (within a reasonable time). I probably (physically) can do 500 right now (remind me to write about the 40% rule) but it will take at least a couple of hours and I’ll be hammered for a week.
In order to try and address this, I’m looking to do an experiment! Experiments are something I’ve been doing for a while privately, but making them public helps being more consistent, and easily linking and referring to the results afterwards.
Yes, an experiment is what it says on the tin: there’s a problem, a proposed solution that I’m trying out for a certain period of time, an expected result and—at the end—the actual result. Overall, a poor man’s kaizen, if you will.
Problem
My training sessions have been inconsistent (see above) and I want to both make them more consistent and think less about scheduling.
Daily training (such as made popular, for example, by Iron Wolf) is usually unsustainable for me for more than a short period of time. At the same time, I prefer to keep my sessions short and focused (see my current training cards), so the traditional “three times per week” doesn’t work for me either.
On top of that, my ambient anxiety has significantly increased to the point where it’s interfering with my daily activities. I need to exercise consistently to bring it back down.
Proposed solution
Simple: two days on and one day off, or (an average of) two sessions for every three days should be a load that would work for me long-term. If it does, I’ll adopt it for all of my training for 2024.
Expected result
I train consistently and don’t miss more than three scheduled sessions over the course of the month. Days can be moved around but it’s the month’s total that matters.
Ambient anxiety is decreased from medium-high to low (perceptual).
Timeframe
The experiment will run during the whole month of December 2023.
Progress notes
I may add some notes as I go, but the sessions themselves will appear in the training log.
Actual result
Well, that did not go to plan at all! In fact, I trained even less than “usual” when not trying at all. I didn’t make a particular effort on purpose not to skew the results. Maybe I just got tired toward the end of the year? I really had to drag myself over the finish line at work, that’s for sure.
In the first half of the month when I was still doing it, the most confusing thing has been to place myself within the current triplet of days: were I in the beginning or the end, could I skip a day or not? I expect that next time I will have specific boundaries between the sets of days and that will help me orient myself.
For the record, training of any sort has never been natural for me so it’s unlikely I suddenly start being consistent. I don’t hate it and I like the results but most days I’d rather do something else. However, intellectually I know that I absolutely need to train both for mental health and longevity. If at the end of year I have trained every other day (180+ times) and more evenly distributed than in 2023, I’ll consider that a raging success.
Anyway, the result has been inconclusive so I’ll do an adjusted run later (when I recover from the shoulder pain that I unexpectedly developed across the New Year).